Today at 2pm, representatives of the slovakian club Tatran Presov donated a number of books on slovakian to the Croatian national library in Nasice. This donation is the start of one beautiful friendship and cooperation, as the idea was assisted by the home team - Nexe, with Vardar and Metalurg also joining the initiative in the future.

This nice story was supported by Miroslav Chmeliar, the owner and president of Tatran, Miroslav Benciky, Tatran's general manager, Hrvoje Simic, Deputy Mayor of Nasice, Silvija Sokic, the director of the Croatian city library in Nasice, Vjekoslav Mahlovic, spokesman of Nexe and Branka Baksa, vice-president of national minorities advisers in Croatia and secretary of the Slovak Union in Croatia.

The books were given to the Nasice library by the owner and president of Tatran, Miroslav Chmeliar who said: "We know there is a minority Slovakin population living here. We want to have interaction with them and these books are reminder for them, so they know their origin, where they come from. It's a big satisfaction that we were able to do it."

Donation included almost 200 books, with a spectrum of topics and contents. Tatran's general manager explained how they collected the books: "We thought it would be a nice idea to collect the books for our cousins, people from Slovakia, outside their home town. Part of the books were donated by the people of Presov, the other part was donated by the county. Rest of it was donated by friends of the team. People were happy to give away books and to help. I believe it is a great thing to be able to give a book to a person from Slovakia on their mother tounge when they’re far away from home. The simbolism of this act is very nice", said Benciky who emphasized the involvement of the SEHA - Gazprom League in the whole action. "Once again SEHA proved that it is a serious competition in Europe and that is not only focused on sport but makes connections with other parts of society. It is our honor to be a part of this competition, since it’s very beginnings. I hope that SEHA will gain even bigger support in the future. If there weren’t for SEHA, I don’t know if we would have pulled this off", stated Benciky. 

The idea about this donation started two months ago, since Nasice has a large working population of Slovaks and Macedonians. That is why the head secretary of Nexe Vjekoslav Mahovlic wanted to take advantage of the good relationship the club has with Tatran, Vardar and Metalurg in a unique way. Mahlovic commended this cooperation through handball: "SEHA also helped a lot with this story, because if there weren’t for SEHA, who knows how often we would have met. Of course, handball in general as well. Sport was our guideline."

Nexe player Vedran Zrnic also commented this action: "I would like to applaud the slovakian book donation initiative, organized by Tatran Presov and our club Nexe, so that our library in Nasice gets more books. I think that's great, it's good that people read. Of course, athletes should read more, that's important regarding the intellectual development and concentration. I think that's very good for every sportsman. Read as much as you can."

To top the day off, Nexe and Tatran will square off today at 7pm in Sports hall Nasice as part of the 6th round of the SEHA - Gazprom League.